‘She’s fair.’ I decide this early on, and we share a look of foreboding, because we both know that means Ollie’s doomed.

  Ollie and an accomplice had forced their way into a house and threatened the two occupants with a baseball bat before subjecting them to a ‘terrifying and sustained attack.’ Ollie had done the attacking while his accomplice went around stealing from the property. It wasn’t his first crime. Not by half. The judge said he was a risk to the public, and it was such a serious crime there was no option but to send him to juvenile prison for two years until he’s eighteen, when he will then be transferred to the men’s adult prison. The jail time, she says, reflects the seriousness of the crime and the effect it has had on the two victims since the events.

  Her fairness decides that Ollie be sentenced to a total of six years and nine months for aggravated assault and burglary. I don’t know. I suppose it was fair to the other side.

  Ollie is staring at the floor. The tips of his too-big ears are pink, his cheeks flushed. He’s tall and skinny, he hasn’t yet grown into himself, physically or mentally. He doesn’t even know who he is. He will be serving his time for the acts of a passing version of himself. He doesn’t react when the sentence is announced. I wonder at first if he’s heard her, but as he processes it his colours reveal the stormy swirls. None of the good colours; flashes of metallic anger, a proper rainstorm. Nothing to suggest remorse or regret, though I search for it, I hope for it. There’s just anger and a different kind of regret: that he didn’t get away with it.

  It’s only when he’s cuffed and taken away that he glances over at Hugh. When I see his face, I see the little kid playing on the floor with his wrestlers, desperate for attention and love. Then he looks at me and his face hardens. He toughens up as he’s taken away.

  I could never give him any comfort. Or, in this instance, an alibi.

  Lily complains of lower backache, initially blaming the hard stool at work. It’s around the time of Ollie’s arrest and the stress is getting to her, it’s getting to us all, so we put it down to that. We ignore it, ignore her for a while while we focus on the most important thing. She has a tendency to put herself first in the middle of somebody else’s drama and we have more important things to worry about. It’s only afterwards, when he’s sent away and she’s still complaining, that she goes to the doctor. She has to visit a few times before they really listen to her and start referring her for appointments that she joins waiting lists to attend.

  They diagnose a spinal infection, which turns out to be a tumour so big it’s wrapped around her spine like tinsel around a tree trunk. Colour-wise it’s like rotting fruit, a bruised banana, a rusty brown.

  They discover Burkitt lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, after spinal surgery.

  I question why I didn’t see it more clearly. I was concentrating on Ollie, yes, I was concentrating on Hugh, yes. I was even trying to keep my own head above water. But Lily … I’d stopped looking, and I’d stopped listening. It was like she’d become so loud in my head I had learned to live with the white noise. What had I become to be able to recognise everybody else’s pain but hers?

  Ollie is in prison, Hugh has accepted a teaching job in Doha, I’m here.

  She has ten rounds of chemotherapy, ending with a spinal tap in three spots, plus chemo in her tailbone area, up the spinal cord around the brain cavity. It’s followed by months of physical therapy to crawl, to sit. I nurse her, I care for her. The first time I haul her into the bath to bathe her, she cries. It is not an effortless, seamless job; it is flawed and awkward. I hurt her when I accidentally pinch her, when I grab her in the wrong place, when I bang her against the side of the bath and the wall, and the pointed corner of the toilet roll holder.

  It’s hard on us both. At night, I cry too.

  ‘I can’t do this to you,’ Hugh says, looking harassed, hair messy on his head as though he’s been in a fight with himself.

  He’s getting married tomorrow to Poh, something quick in the registry office, because they can’t live together in Doha if they’re not married. They both got jobs in an international school in Doha, teaching English. They’ll be living on an oil refinery in a townhouse with a swimming pool, getting paid triple what they’d get paid here, saving up enough money to move back and buy a house and start a family. They’ve dropped the wedding on us at the last minute, though they must have known for a while. It will just be me, Lily and Poh’s parents and brothers. I go shopping with Lily for something nice for both of us. Trying to manoeuvre her wheelchair through shops and department stores makes us both hot and bothered. Finding something that will fit her changed body sends her over the edge. I feel like I’m shopping with a hormonal teenage girl. It’s painful for both of us.

  ‘I feel like I’m abandoning you again.’

  ‘You’re not abandoning me. You have a job in Doha waiting for you. Ollie is in prison.’

  He flinches at that, unable to bear it. I bet he doesn’t tell anyone about Ollie.

  ‘I’m here, Hugh, it’s the only sensible option. This is my decision.’

  ‘But this shouldn’t be happening, Alice, it’s messed up. You should be studying.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me the things I should be doing now,’ I say firmly.

  ‘Sorry.’ He slowly turns his pint around on the table. ‘You got the details I sent you about the remote learning?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll see.’ Right now I’m so tired by the time Lily goes to bed that all I can do is sleep. I can’t imagine studying.

  ‘We could get a carer,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t have to be you, full-time.’

  ‘We’ve already talked about this. We can’t afford it. She has no savings and I have less.’

  ‘You’re nineteen. No one has savings at nineteen.’

  ‘You had.’

  We smile.

  ‘Yeah, well. No normal person has savings at nineteen. So Poh says. Nobody organises themself this much. I drive her crazy.’

  ‘She’s crazy about you. Anyway you had to do it. You had to organise yourself or you would never have left here.’

  ‘The plan was to take you with me.’ He’s tormenting himself, over and over. I can only take so much before it starts to penetrate into me. I need him to lift me up, to tell me I can do this, not the opposite.

  ‘And what would I have done? Dig for oil?’ I joke.

  He takes some forms out of his backpack and places them on the table. His fingers are shaking. ‘You qualify for benefits. I’ve researched it all. Sign these forms and post them with some form of ID. A carer’s allowance. It’s officially your job because you’re alone and doing it full-time. I’ve applied on Mum’s behalf for a grant for the home adaptions. You can’t keep carrying her around, you’ll do your back in.’

  ‘What kind of home adaptions?’

  ‘A ramp, a shower, grab rails, a stair lift. She’s entitled, she has a medical card, essential items of equipment are free. She could apply for a house swap, get on the list for a ground-floor flat or something, she’s entitled, but I doubt she’ll leave the house.’

  I agree. She’d never leave.

  He places another form on the table. ‘You need a copy of her passport for this one, and proof of address, this one for you, this one for her. I’ve put Post-its on the pages explaining what you need to do, these yellow sticky things are where you’ve to sign.’ No one can say Hugh has never cared, never worried, never felt responsible, never felt the burden. He feels it all and he doesn’t deserve it. He deserves to live.

  The words on the forms are all swimming in my eyes. I won’t be able to do this. Grants and application forms are not my strong suit. I take them all and hug them to my chest, knowing I’ll probably leave them to collect dust on the kitchen counter for months. I’d really love it if Hugh stayed. That would be the perfect thing, the ideal. Him and me in the house, it would be so much easier. With her new mood-stabilising medication, she had been having less manic episodes, but the chemo has messed with everything and she has to find new levels again. Plus she’s physically harder to care for.

  I wish he didn’t have to leave but it’s less of a waste of a life if I stay.

  I judge people so quickly by their colours, by their true hidden selves; I make a decision instantly whether to move forward with them or not. I never try to learn anything more about them, get to know the outer part, try to help them or even understand the reason for their inner part. Even with more insight than most, I recognise that at eight years old I became lazy with people, with actual human interaction, and growth has been stunted. It is the opposite to everyone else; most people begin knowing somebody on the surface level and spend time gaining trust, getting to know what’s beneath. The fun part, perhaps. Only when they get in there and discover what’s inside do they decide whether they like it or not. Takes them a year or two, maybe a decade or two. But I know straight away.

  There are lovely parts to people too, always such lovely parts that can draw you in. They can radiate happiness and contentment, strength and solidity from their core. People who’d be good for you. Daria at the coffee shop who writes positive messages on the take-out cups, Mr Ganguly next door who sings Tom Jones when he’s doing the garden. Their granddaughter, who looks like a wobbling dumpling, giggles and laughs as she discovers everything for the first time. And the conversations between the two of them is the stuff of joy.

  That’s what you want to be around, be a part of. People who make you want to be with them, and be better.

  But you can’t just observe, stand by idly like a spare part. They have to want you too.

  One month after Hugh has left, one month caring for Lily completely alone, and I feel like I’m drowning. Drowning, not in her colours but in my own. Drowning in the drudgery, the routine, the loneliness, the giving, the giving, the giving.

  Caregiver.

  Caretaker.

  Care grabber, care snatcher, care monster.

  I must look like those blank-faced, staring, zombie parents who are there but not there when standing at a playground, looking but not seeing a thing while their kids could be rolling in dogshit for all they know. So unaware of their surroundings; following, not leading, turned into lemmings, live agar in a Petri dish, some social experiment.

  I’m nineteen years old, Lily is forty-nine and she’s in this chair for life. She’s doing physio but the odds are against her. Hugh is in Doha, Ollie is in prison, I am here. If the first month is like this, I won’t last the year, never mind ten years, or more. Looking forward into my future is what sends me into a panic. I can’t keep doing this forever. I can’t catch my breath at the thought. I can only focus on the moments I’m in, to truly cope. And then when those moments, like cleaning her, dressing her, are too much to cope with, my mind travels to the future: a silent hope that this will all end soon. But I know it won’t. And then I panic.

  I start making a routine. We get up. I wash her, dress her, we eat and then no matter what the weather, we go out. We go to the local parks every day – Johnstown Park, Mellowes Park, Griffith Park, Tolka Valley Park, National Botanic Gardens – but over time they are not enough. I know every lane, every curve, every route, and we have all day, every day, so why not venture further? We get the bus to the Ormsby Estate and Private Gardens and, though we have to pay for entry, it’s worth it. Suddenly there’s a new place to explore.

  My energy is restored by the vibrant colours floating around from nature, exotic trees brought in by grand lords and ladies from way back when, but also from people I don’t know, people not from my area. I think that Lily feels the same way because she doesn’t complain, not even when it’s windy, or cold, or starts to rain. We both want to be out of the house, away, distracted, doing something.

  The first day we’re there it’s mid-June. It’s a warm day but cooled nicely by the shade and cover of the trees. We don’t talk. We rarely do.

  I can feel my chest start to loosen and it’s only then I realise how tight it was. My body uncoils, starts to release, my shoulders relax, my hands stop clenching the wheelchair so tightly. I can breathe. I lift my face to the sky and breathe. I open my eyes and smile and when I open them we’re at a bridge. There’s one step up to the bridge which means I can’t bring Lily, or I could if I turned her around and pulled her up the step as I sometimes have to do, as though she’s in a buggy, but that’s difficult with such a heavy wheelchair and I don’t this time. A space she can’t enter makes it all the more attractive. My eyes are pulled to the sight before me. A rose garden in full bloom, bathed in glorious colours.

  The blooming flowers have a blooming effect on my heart. I wander through the maze and walkways of rose beds, under the arches of the climbing roses. I don’t know anything about flowers, but I know they are pretty. I know that they are alive, that they’re healthy, that they’re beautiful, that they are pure, that they are proud of their beauty, gurus of nature, raising their heads to the sun, reaching tall.

  It’s not just the colours of their petals, it’s their auras too that are sublime. I weave my way through them all, reaching out and touching the velvety petals with my fingertips, wanting their energies.

  Lily gives side-eye from across the bridge, letting me know she thinks my expression of joy is weird.

  ‘Do you want to come over?’

  ‘No. You’re all right.’

  On the way home I buy a bouquet of flowers at the petrol station. I realise that this is the energy our house is missing.

  I can’t see people’s energies when they’re on television. Lily teases my reactions; how I howl so loudly with laughter I can’t breathe, and cry so hard my chest hurts and my eyes sting. Even though the acting is a deception in itself, there are no colours around them to distract, or to suggest they are deceiving me. I can believe them. It’s both an escape and a trap.

  It’s a Sunday, Lily is in front of the TV watching a football match. I’m in the kitchen trying to revive a plant that insists on dying even at the window and with me watering it every day. It’s the third plant I’ve killed.

  ‘There’s your friend,’ she calls.

  I ignore her.

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘What?’ I snap. It’s not me that’s killing these plants, it must be her and her bad vibes.

  ‘Your friend is on telly.’

  ‘Who?’ I walk in carrying the plant pot, it dribbles dirty soil water from the base onto the carpet. I curse.

  ‘That lad from school.’

  It’s a football match, I assume she’s referring to someone in the stand. I scan the crowd for a familiar face, not seeing anyone. I finally listen to the commentator: ‘Gospel Mkundi. Dublin native. Only his third appearance on the first team, but his recent debut revealed that he’s Crystal Palace’s shining new talent.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the second commentator agrees. ‘Gospel has shown himself to be a very gifted player, with a blistering pace and remarkable dribbling capabilities. Certainly one of their most promising players and I predict great things for him.’

  Gospel runs across the pitch in his blue and red kit, fixing the waistband of his shorts to his position as a centre forward. He looks around, finding himself, rooting himself, a little glance to the stadium with twenty-five thousand people watching. He blinks a little, once, twice, nothing like before, no twitch of his head or shoulders. No one but me would even notice.

  ‘Girls, you three will be sharing this room. Nice one, it’s over the kitchen, smells of freshly baked bread every morning,’ Gloria says the first morning I arrive at the academy. ‘You’ll meet Chef Alan, he’s a wizard. Cakes, doughnuts, pies – you name it, he bakes it.’

  We all look out the window as if expecting to see them lined up, but we just see the ugly flat roof of a kitchen and pipes.

  ‘I’ll leave you to settle down and get to know each other. The principal will be greeting everyone in the dinner hall in an hour, so relax until then.’

  We all look at each other.

  ‘What are your names?’ the Indian-Irish girl asks. ‘I’m Saloni. Can’t remember names for shit.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I say, laughing. ‘I’m Alice.’

  ‘I’m Grace.’ She’s small and birdlike, with a spattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks. She looks like she’d blow over in a breeze.

  Saloni chooses the bottom bunk, Grace takes the top, which leaves me with the option of either top or bottom of the second bunk bed to myself. I choose the top. No arguments, no drama, no psychos – yet, anyway.

  During the night there’s a thump and a crack as Grace lands on the floor between the two bunks. Saloni wakes up and screams when she sees Grace lying on the floor at an unnatural angle, groaning.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Saloni says. ‘Get the light.’

  I try to get down as quickly as I can, feeling like I’m moving in slow motion as I fumble and try to find my way down the ladder. I feel along the wall for the light switch, and it takes me a moment to adjust to the light and find Saloni on her knees beside Grace’s dislocated body.

  ‘Call for help!’ Saloni says, and I hurry down the quiet corridor to where the dorm manager is sleeping.

  I don’t sleep the rest of the night, not for one second. Nor was I asleep when Grace fell. I had been wide awake, getting used to the new sounds of the building when I’d heard the creak of Grace’s bed as she sat up, then stood up and threw herself off the top.

  I watch Grace being showered with kindness and attention in the canteen. Someone offers to carry her tray, a table of girls invite her to join them, everyone instantly knows her name. She seems to revel in the light.

  ‘I bet she broke her own leg for the attention,’ a voice says, behind me.

  I turn around to find the source of the voice and come face to face with a cute guy, huge brown eyes, never-ending eyelashes, tall and broad. Then he blinks once, twice, twitches, then throws his head back and grunts, like a horse tossing its head. The move is so violent it looks painful. Then he’s back to normal again. He doesn’t explain anything about what just happened and his colours don’t suggest any kind of anger or malice. With no apologies or an attempt to address it, he continues to watch Grace.